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Serena Williams

OK, you are are probably saying, “What is this guy talking about”, so let me explain. In May of this year (2015), a deputy from Lee County in FL decided to post a video of a black man and attached the comment, “Can someone please tell me what the [expletive] this monkey is saying?” He also said, “Get a real life [expletive] monkey.” This deputy thinks that black people are monkeys. He would like to dehumanize black people in an attempt to justify his racism, justify the things he has done as a police officer.

But let’s not stop there, lets rewind back generations to Frederick Douglass. Mr. Douglass painted a picture of how slaves were dehumanized. Douglass says that from the time a slave entered the world, the dehumanizing began. They were immediately separated from their mother, an attempt to break the bond between mother and child (Douglass). He goes on to say that slaves were not told their birthday or age, this was a way the slave master enforced the slaves’ status as property. Rape, torture, forced breeding, being called a sub-species of human were all ways that slaves were dehumanized. Douglass says the worst way was probably lack of access to education. All these tactics had one purpose in mind; so that the rest of the general population would see slaves as animals, unworthy of human rights, justice, opportunity or freedom. And this is still repeated today, just look at the Florida deputy, calling a black man a monkey.

So why do I say that black people have a problem? Well here it is. Blacks are still an oppressed minority, and this has been evident in the US with the on-going police brutality, high incarceration rates, white-supremacist terrorist attacks and economic & social inequality. Some black people are fighting hard against this with the #blacklivematter campaign. However, there is one thing that is getting in their way. It is this general attitude to continue to bash other oppressed minorities, in particular the LGBT community. The picture above, which I will assume was created by DL Hughley or a fan (#teamDL tag on picture), and shared by his Facebook page is one example of blacks actually dehumanizing another human being. One may say that, no this picture is just showing the way the media is celebrating Caitlyn, while bashing Serena and it is based on race. I will argue here that this picture has a specific aim, because the person who created it knows that the emotions of blacks (specifically religious blacks) are high on the coat-tail of the SCOTUS ruling on same-sex marriage. It was created to make a distinct division, and to highlight the need to foster civil-rights “competition” and self-segregate the black community into its own world. If this picture was just to highlight race and white-supremacy, why not create this picture (below), showing Samantha Stosur, another muscular tennis player, which would make for a better comparison. Two female tennis players, both muscular and successful, but one happens to be black and one happens to be white. The motives of the original DL Hughley photo become clear.

Some may also argue that the first picture is not dehumanizing Caitlyn. Well, let me show you some of the comments from DL Hughley’s Facebook page.

Ok….check this. Do Not Ever put Serena next to that again. (Calling Caitlyn a that says she is not a human, unworthy of respect)

Serena lookin like a Queen.. And Jenner lookin like the BEAST (Didn’t slave masters and the white population call slaves animals? And today, racist continue to call us monkeys)

Serena is a woman made from God. Bruce is man made. (Caitlyn is “fake”)

Jenner looks like a genetically made freakazoid!!! (Caitlyn is a “science experiment”)

So back to the black people’s problem. In April of this year LGBT groups rallied around black civil rights groups to denounce police brutality. They understood that injustice is injustice and a unified front against it is one way to tackle the issue. What do black people do? Continue to tear LGBT people down, to try to segregate themselves and make civil rights or respect a competition, and post memes like this one. Blacks try to dehumanize Caitlyn, in an attempt to show that their plight is more valid or more real, conveniently forgetting that their ancestors were also dehumanized (albeit on a much larger and more harsh scale). Also, this picture is tearing a human down, to show that tearing another human down is wrong. The hypocrisy is deafening.

Now, I also understand that transgender people are hard to comprehend to some. I even struggle with it, but I understand that I may never fully understand, because I do not walk in the transgender’s shoes. However, not understanding something is no excuse. We have access to so much information these days. To go back to Douglass he believed the greatest aspect of dehumanization in slavery…was not giving slaves the resources to develop literacy or intelligence. Are black people dehumanizing themselves when they refuse to get educated with so much information out there?

I leave you with this. How can people take the “new” black civil and human rights movement seriously, when blacks continue to bash and dehumanize other human beings? Why is it that blacks cannot work with other disenfranchised groups to create a larger movement against all the world’s injustice (The LGBT groups rallied for the black cause, even while being called abominations, faggots, dykes, man-bitches and the destroyers of civilizations). When will black people finally wake up to reality and realize that they will never progress if they keep pushing everyone away?